This is really crummy. If they want to support charities, just do it. I already have to buy from them for them to make a donation. Now I have to grant invasive permissions as well?
They don't want to support charities.
They want to get people that want that to spend more money with them.
They did the math, and the number of people that will say "no" to that permission is significantly smaller than the amount of money they make from forcing that permission in order to get them to give their scraps to charities.
Even better, they want cheap advertising from charities. Plenty of charities broadcast to their network that you should go set up Amazon Smile to support that charity. And thus you get charities advertising for Amazon.
Associating a charitable donation with a transaction is all about exploiting opportunities for price discrimination.
The fundamental problem of selling things was always that you had to set one price, unless it was a big-ticket thing that people haggle over. With one price, it's too high for some people, so you lose the potential profit from selling to them at a lower price, and some people buy, but would pay more, so you lose the extra profit from charging them the maximum it is worth to them.
Being willing to donate during a transaction is a valuable hint that you would pay more if you had to.
I've been avoiding Amazon for a while, but I wanted a product recently that was only on Amazon, and as I clicked through the shipping options, and refused Amazon Prime for the nth time, they jacked up the price by like $5. So I abandoned the order. But I guess their techniques work at scale.
My hope is that somehow, their algorithms to discriminate in pricing cause them to self-destruct eventually. In the meantime, I think this is a major part of the dynamic making people feel, and be, poorer - during the past decade there has just been a revolution in eliminating consumer surplus and converting it into producer surplus, and that's where all the corporate growth/wealth is coming from.
>Being willing to donate during a transaction is a valuable hint that you would pay more if you had to.
I don't get this. How does using amazon smile signal that I'm willing to pay more? The prices are the same as the regular site and the donation money is coming out of amazon's pocket.
I was thinking more in general, because many businesses are asking for donations to charity when you buy something.
But as far as Amazon goes, how do you determine the prices are the same? It seems to me they change from second to second, and presumably from person to person. Do you ever buy the same product at the same time using both methods?
I closed all of my Amazon accounts about a year ago, now I buy so much less crap I never needed. The only thing I miss is books... can't always find them with local stores, even on order.
I had to go through all those "are you really, really sure?" Only to be required to call them after all that and say, YES! I AM SURE
#BoycottBezos
Because the only good thing he can think to do with his money is go to space. Maybe he's doing this so he can keep the profits and try to catch Elon
I don’t have any personal objections with how Bezos decides to use his money, but to your point of books — how’s your local library? I recently realized I was spending some non-negligible amount of money on books every month and switched to the local library. It obviously depends on where you live but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. It’s a fantastic system of local libraries and they’ve all the titles I want to read. There’s a wait for new titles, like Snowden’s book will need me to wait a couple of months, but anything older than a year is almost always available. As the book loan is for 21 days, it also forces me to finish my reading within this time.
I like the ability to annotate books. Re-reading with annotations is much more interesting because often I will have realized things on first reading that I didn't the next one.
I almost don’t want to share this because it might get picked over but Alibris has been great.
You do have to be careful as you could receive an unauthorized print from a less scrupulous dealers but I’m not sure how common that is. I don’t think I have personally. One copy I received had me question it because it was a bad printing but it appears to be a licensed print (C Programming Language, 2nd ed)
For me, some new-ish books are available via Inter-Library Loans (https://w.wiki/9yP), and it is quite awesome for me. I have to pay for the postage but local government pays 70% of the bill for me so I pay ₩1500 (approx. $1.2).
For me it's not so much about how he uses his money, but how he gets it.
Raking in obscene amounts of money by working people to the bone and forcing them to pee in bottles and not be able to take proper breaks is unconscionable in my book, and can't bring myself to support such a morally repugnant business model.
I don't doubt that much of the reporting on the working conditions at Amazon warehouses has been exaggerated, but someone who views taking a sick day in a year as a moral failure is not a good spokesperson to make that case. And it's interesting that he doesn't mention that the "Jeff Bezos's generosity" he benefit from came exactly because of those Amazon critics he's debunking (Bezos said so himself).
As the book loan is for 21 days, it also forces me to finish my reading within this time.
If you're in Chicago, it's even longer than 21 days. It's just short of forever.
The Chicago Public Library recently abolished all late fees, forgave existing fines, and now if you check out a book, it automatically renews something like 99 times.
"a system that for years has locked out library users when they accrue $10 worth of fines — a penalty that disproportionately affects poor families who need free access to books and high-speed internet the most."
"one in five cards that are blocked in Chicago belong to kids under the age of 14"
I don't understand why so many people support Amazon so much. Everything week there seems to be another story that makes me think "scumbags" or "asshole."
As long as they keep getting money their behavior will not chamge.
Theres a story about one of the FAANGs just about every day... and these stories are published by outlets who directly compete with these companies in terms of views, clicks, as views, publishing, etc.
Not defending the tech giants but saying they’re horrible because you read about them everyday is only part of the story. Those stories are laid out in front of you by the very people who have vested interests against Amazons and the Googles of the world.
The articles mostly just repeat the same 3 complaints.
1) They employ a lot of people for doing shitty work. But they're not making those jobs worse, the jobs just suck, and the same jobs elsewhere are just as bad and often pays less. But people don't really want to address the societal root cause, and frown upon talks of increasing minimum wage, setting worker rights regulations, and promoting unionization. So I just see Amazon as a scapegoat for the fact no one really cares.
2) They struggle with quality control, which I've never particularly experienced. And I feel this is true of all big platforms in the internet era. Also, it's normal at their scale, even if only 1% of products have quality issues, that's like millions of orders to write news about. Maybe my local store also has about 1% of issues, but it just doesn't make headlines. The flip side is Amazon has awesome support and return policies.
3) They're killing local stores. I guess I just see that as healthy competition. Amazon just offers a really convenient service. I don't have to leave my house to buy stuff! That's awesome. Also, I see it more as internet shopping is killing local stores. If Amazon goes bust, it'll be some other online store. Driving your car to buy goods just no longer makes sense with the internet in my opinion, unless its goods you have to try out or inspect first. Lastly, I find the real local outlets, like straight from farms markets, hand made artisan shops etc. are competing quite well and not dying. Etsy is doing great for example. So it's more the non competitive middleman that are dying, and that's just healthy competition in my mind. They have to offer a better middleman service, or wait for Amazon to get lazy and stop offering a good service, which they haven't yet.
You should feel fortunate that you don't understand why, because the answer will frustrate you even more than not understanding it. The horrible truth: most people don't give a damn.
In honestly wish I could ditch Amazon. I love in a pretty remote area and have a small kid. Getting to a store is an ordeal and when we're running low on things, amazon is usually the only fast way to get anything. Next move will have better resources but this move was a necessity. I hate that we use Amazon so much but it's the best offering where I am.
That must just be for purchases through the app? Yesterday, I went to amazon.com and the website reminded me that I wasn't using the Smile (charity) portal and had a button to redirect me to smile.amazon.com. I smiled at that non-dark-pattern. I don't have the app...
I get that too from time to time and I feel like it happens if I have a referral cookie set or arrived from a direct referral link and added an item to my cart.
The half a percent they give your charity is less than the referral commission.
Overall I am very happy to be able to passively support my charity of choice this way.
I’d say the deduction would be claimed by Amazon, and the IRS wouldn’t allow the customer to claim it. And as a sibling commenter mentioned, for businesses it doesn’t matter if it’s a charitable donation or business expense.
It's not even like they want to offer the option but hope people won't use it. (I think.) After all, they remind you pretty frequently to use it if you've chosen someone to donate to.
Yeah, only thing I can think of is they need users to manually opt in to making those donations, and forcing users to remember and use an odd URL is their chosen way of doing that. It's weird, but for a good cause, so whatever I suppose.
Amazon doesn’t like when customers use Google to search for a product, then click on the Amazon link and buy it. Amazon doesn’t get the search and behavioral data from that.
By forcing the customer to go to a special site, the customer has to now search and browse directly on Amazon for their items.
Amazon should fix their search engine, but Jeff Bezos has been tone-deaf to the issue for years. I think it was 6 or so years back when I was at an all-hands that Bezos was confronted by an employee about the poor quality of search on amazon.com and Bezos shrugged the matter off, said that Top Minds™ had created it and that he thought they did a great job.
Actually, it may well have been a dark pattern. Did you go to Amazon via an affiliate link? I believe that Amazon pays a lesser commission on smile orders than affiliate linked ones.
Dark patterns are often justified as trying to gain more of a user’s/customer’s attention, as seen to be the case here. IMHO, this is Amazon shrewdly introducing limits to their charity.
Whether it be a functional constraint or a dark pattern, user’s attention is being exchanged for agency of charity on behalf of the consumer.
A quick search on Twitter leads me to believe there is a feedback cycle Amazon leveraged with notifications about the Smile program. Consumers buy, notifications of their charity are pushed, Amazon profits. Repeat cycle. Amazon profits.
Amazon has recently started providing third party sellers for 'fulfilled by Amazon' orders with all of your personal information. There is no reason for them to have this.
I've gotten three marketing postcards and have a persistent Facebook ad that started appearing from a brand the day after I ordered one of their products. Don't buy stuff on Amazon if you don't want the third party seller to get all your info.
My burner google voice number I use for amazon started getting a ton of spam calls after I ordered from a drop shipper. Wonder if that's how they got my number.
Amazon has made this information available to Pro Sellers for years.
I think the original logic was if there was a problem with the order (missing part, defective product, etc.) the seller could send a replacement without having to ask Amazon for the customer's contact info.
As an Amazon customer, I have never received marketing mail separately from the item I ordered. However, almost all orders include a printed postcard or slip of paper saying something to the effect of "If there's a problem with the order, contact us, but if you like the product please leave a review."
These were mailed separately, which is what surprised me. When I left a negative review, Amazon removed it because it's "not about the product". Appears their new policy is to provide customer name, address, email and phone to third party sellers.
Postcard's call to action was to visit a URL. Luckily I opened it in a incognito tab, because the URL redirected to try to use a logged in Facebook messenger session to send the brand a message.
They do not provide your email address to third party sellers, the only way to email a buyer is through Amazon. I don't ever recall ever seeing a buyer's phone number, but I have also never looked for it. You've always been able to see a buyer's name and address, including for FBA orders, that not a new policy.
Amazon changed this because many recent lawsuits have used the fact there's no direct buyer seller relationship to argue Amazon should be liable for defective products instead of the seller.
Recently? They've always provided your personal information to third party FBA sellers. At least since 2015 which is when I started FBA. I've always been able to view the name/address my order was shipped to.
Better to donate directly to causes you support or through places like Kiva.org (yeah, I know they have their issues too, but still better than Amazon).
82 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadThe fundamental problem of selling things was always that you had to set one price, unless it was a big-ticket thing that people haggle over. With one price, it's too high for some people, so you lose the potential profit from selling to them at a lower price, and some people buy, but would pay more, so you lose the extra profit from charging them the maximum it is worth to them.
Being willing to donate during a transaction is a valuable hint that you would pay more if you had to.
I've been avoiding Amazon for a while, but I wanted a product recently that was only on Amazon, and as I clicked through the shipping options, and refused Amazon Prime for the nth time, they jacked up the price by like $5. So I abandoned the order. But I guess their techniques work at scale.
My hope is that somehow, their algorithms to discriminate in pricing cause them to self-destruct eventually. In the meantime, I think this is a major part of the dynamic making people feel, and be, poorer - during the past decade there has just been a revolution in eliminating consumer surplus and converting it into producer surplus, and that's where all the corporate growth/wealth is coming from.
I don't get this. How does using amazon smile signal that I'm willing to pay more? The prices are the same as the regular site and the donation money is coming out of amazon's pocket.
But as far as Amazon goes, how do you determine the prices are the same? It seems to me they change from second to second, and presumably from person to person. Do you ever buy the same product at the same time using both methods?
I had to go through all those "are you really, really sure?" Only to be required to call them after all that and say, YES! I AM SURE
#BoycottBezos
Because the only good thing he can think to do with his money is go to space. Maybe he's doing this so he can keep the profits and try to catch Elon
I do super miss my college library
You do have to be careful as you could receive an unauthorized print from a less scrupulous dealers but I’m not sure how common that is. I don’t think I have personally. One copy I received had me question it because it was a bad printing but it appears to be a licensed print (C Programming Language, 2nd ed)
https://alibris.com/
You just have to be willing to wait for the shipment and be willing to keep your own private library.
Edit: looks like the beans had already been spilled on that one. Well my experience has been good
Raking in obscene amounts of money by working people to the bone and forcing them to pee in bottles and not be able to take proper breaks is unconscionable in my book, and can't bring myself to support such a morally repugnant business model.
https://quillette.com/2019/07/19/the-problem-with-tourist-jo...
More than that, it's not what a great number of Amazon workers say. And have been saying since at least 2012: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-...
I don't doubt that much of the reporting on the working conditions at Amazon warehouses has been exaggerated, but someone who views taking a sick day in a year as a moral failure is not a good spokesperson to make that case. And it's interesting that he doesn't mention that the "Jeff Bezos's generosity" he benefit from came exactly because of those Amazon critics he's debunking (Bezos said so himself).
If you're in Chicago, it's even longer than 21 days. It's just short of forever.
The Chicago Public Library recently abolished all late fees, forgave existing fines, and now if you check out a book, it automatically renews something like 99 times.
"a system that for years has locked out library users when they accrue $10 worth of fines — a penalty that disproportionately affects poor families who need free access to books and high-speed internet the most."
"one in five cards that are blocked in Chicago belong to kids under the age of 14"
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/9/30/20890138/chicago-publ...
Planets are in chaos as Sith Lord Bezos faces his long adversary Obi Elon Kenobi over the fate of the government of the beings and droids.
Elon, please grow a goatee
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/
https://www.booksamillion.com/
And speciality ones like Alibris, AbeBooks, etc.
https://www.abebooks.com/
https://www.alibris.com/
Plenty of options besides Amazon.
As long as they keep getting money their behavior will not chamge.
Not defending the tech giants but saying they’re horrible because you read about them everyday is only part of the story. Those stories are laid out in front of you by the very people who have vested interests against Amazons and the Googles of the world.
1) They employ a lot of people for doing shitty work. But they're not making those jobs worse, the jobs just suck, and the same jobs elsewhere are just as bad and often pays less. But people don't really want to address the societal root cause, and frown upon talks of increasing minimum wage, setting worker rights regulations, and promoting unionization. So I just see Amazon as a scapegoat for the fact no one really cares.
2) They struggle with quality control, which I've never particularly experienced. And I feel this is true of all big platforms in the internet era. Also, it's normal at their scale, even if only 1% of products have quality issues, that's like millions of orders to write news about. Maybe my local store also has about 1% of issues, but it just doesn't make headlines. The flip side is Amazon has awesome support and return policies.
3) They're killing local stores. I guess I just see that as healthy competition. Amazon just offers a really convenient service. I don't have to leave my house to buy stuff! That's awesome. Also, I see it more as internet shopping is killing local stores. If Amazon goes bust, it'll be some other online store. Driving your car to buy goods just no longer makes sense with the internet in my opinion, unless its goods you have to try out or inspect first. Lastly, I find the real local outlets, like straight from farms markets, hand made artisan shops etc. are competing quite well and not dying. Etsy is doing great for example. So it's more the non competitive middleman that are dying, and that's just healthy competition in my mind. They have to offer a better middleman service, or wait for Amazon to get lazy and stop offering a good service, which they haven't yet.
The half a percent they give your charity is less than the referral commission.
Overall I am very happy to be able to passively support my charity of choice this way.
Answer: more user data
Whether it be a functional constraint or a dark pattern, user’s attention is being exchanged for agency of charity on behalf of the consumer.
A quick search on Twitter leads me to believe there is a feedback cycle Amazon leveraged with notifications about the Smile program. Consumers buy, notifications of their charity are pushed, Amazon profits. Repeat cycle. Amazon profits.
I've gotten three marketing postcards and have a persistent Facebook ad that started appearing from a brand the day after I ordered one of their products. Don't buy stuff on Amazon if you don't want the third party seller to get all your info.
I think the original logic was if there was a problem with the order (missing part, defective product, etc.) the seller could send a replacement without having to ask Amazon for the customer's contact info.
As an Amazon customer, I have never received marketing mail separately from the item I ordered. However, almost all orders include a printed postcard or slip of paper saying something to the effect of "If there's a problem with the order, contact us, but if you like the product please leave a review."
Postcard's call to action was to visit a URL. Luckily I opened it in a incognito tab, because the URL redirected to try to use a logged in Facebook messenger session to send the brand a message.
Product reviews are not seller specific so you cannot include seller-specific complaints there.
You need to leave a negative seller feedback instead, those are separate from product reviews.
You're concerned about Amazon giving your personal information to 3rd parties, and yet you use facebook? Sorry, but, lol.
If you try to add your tickets in the United App to your Apple wallet, the app stops you saying the feature requires you to enable notifications.
edit: seems to violate 3.2.2(vi) or 3.2.2(ix) of the App Store Review guidelines
I've been able to do that for a couple years on my sony phone.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/smileallday/id1180442868?mt=12
And Amazon smile! For FF: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amazon-smile/